ses, and the effect of the ball is greatly diminished
by distance, a single inch plate sufficing to stop a spherical shot at a
long distance.

As the result of these experiments, the Emperor proceeded to construct
the Gloire, an iron-clad frigate, which has been completed, has made
several voyages, been tried in a severe gale, for nearly a year has
been the pride of the French navy, and has recently run from Toulon to
Algiers in the brief space of sixty-six hours.

The Gloire is a steam-frigate cased in five-inch plates; she is two
hundred and fifty feet in length by twenty-one in width, mounts
thirty-eight rifled fifty-pounders, is moved by engines of nine hundred
horse-power, is manned by six hundred men, has a speed of twelve and a
half knots, and a capacity for five days' coal,--a capacity which might
be easily increased by a little more breadth of beam, but which is
sufficient for a passage to Algiers, or along the coast of Spain,
England, or Italy. This vessel is considered invulnerable by balls
discharged from rifled cannon at the distance of four hundred yards.

Encouraged by his continued success, the Emperor at once ordered the
construction of nine such frigates, several of which are already
finished. He has since ordered ten more iron-cased frigates and
gun-boats, which are now in course of construction. Before the present
season closes, his iron navy will be composed of twenty steamships and
four floating batteries.

During the contest with Russia, England would not venture to expose her
wooden ships of the line to the close fire of the batteries either
at Cronstadt or Sebastopol, and found it safer to shell them at a
respectful distance and with indifferent success. She was deeply
impressed, however, with the performance of the Lave and Tonnerre at
Kinburn, and seriously disturbed by the completion of the great naval
station at Cherbourg, armed with more than three hundred cannon, and
directly opposite her coast.

England at first sought to meet the new invention by improved artillery,
and produced the Whitworth and Armstrong cannon, which have a range of
four to five miles. With these she practised at short distances upon
targets of strong oaken plank faced with iron plates of four to five
inches in diameter, but found the plates impervious to balls, and
vulnerable only by steel bolts of small diameter, fired at short
distances from Whitworth and Armstrong cannon,--bolts so small that the
wounds they